On the Design of Wardogs

Hi!

I've been on a Wahapedia rampage recently and I can't help but notice some things in regard to War Dogs and their apparent design philosophy.

It's worth noting that I have little experience with W40k, much less with its 9th edition, but I am a game designer and certain things strike me as strange.

Chaos knights have very few model options at a base level (with armies like nids quadrupling their base options), which for the most part I feel like it makes sense since you're not running that many models anyway.

My argument comes in when looking at war dogs though. There are five base types, with karnivore being full melee, executioner and brigand being range specialists and huntsman and stalker for hybrid. The most notable immediate problem is the fact that you can run a stalker with the same stats as a huntsman for the exact cost, but with the added benefit of being pterrorshades (which, as far as I know, affects one relic and one? stratagem). This is obviously very bizarre and should probably be addressed regardless of any other discussion.

Now, I see that none of the five war dogs have any special ability. All but Karnivore share the same stats and outside of certain guns like the autocannon, it seems like weapons are pretty interchangeable. I'm a bit discouraged by this since it all seems a bit same-ish. I get that favours of the dark gods are an excellent way of differentiating your units, and I am of the opinion that they do, but at the same time with many players running lots of war dogs I feel like a bit more diversity wouldn't hurt at all. You don't get favours on all of your dogs when you build the list, and that makes them a bit uninteresting in an army where you don't have many models, to begin with. I feel like this is symptomatic of Armiger's philosophy of design bleeding over to chaos.

As far as I know, IK is an army that is much more focused on buffing your armigers through auras, precepts and bondsman abilities. That is the main strategy. Chaos is more individualistic, and I feel conflicts with your squad of three dogs being all barebones and basically the same.

What do you think? Do you agree? Do you have opinions on how the design of WarDogs could evolve in the future? I would like to see units of 1-2 dogs that are more specialized or dedicated to a certain god. I feel like Moirax is a step in an interesting decision, but I feel like there's so much more you could do with the abilities Chaos Knights are granted.